Nebulous Loot Detected
Soon after the Nebulous Voidcore became available on Tuesday afternoon, reports of players receiving duplicate items quickly began spreading, despite the built-in knockout list designed to to prohibit that very possibility. Although most players wouldn't notice, as the chance of receiving the same item twice out of a pool of 10-15 items is quite low, such a large number of players meant it was bound to happen eventually, and proved that something with the new bonus roll system was very wrong.
The response was surprisingly fast. On Wednesday, Blizzard announced that they were investigating the issue, promptly announcing a fix within the same day. By Thursday, a more complete blog post was released, explaining the problem and solution - refunding all cores spent by players while the bug was active, as compensation for items not being properly removed from the loot table.
The knockout list can be checked by mousing over the bonus roll.
Even if they did not initially receive a duplicate item, the intent was that a player who rolled a chest and a ring could still roll a duplicate chest or ring, so the refunded cores served as a protection against the broken knockout list. However, not everyone was necessarily put in that situation either. A player that gambled and happened to get whatever they wanted from a particular boss or dungeon could simply take their refunded bonus roll over to another activity instead, resulting in more loot without any concern for the previous issues.
Effective or Expedient
Predictably, a portion of the player base has since voiced their displeasure and perceived unfairness with this blanket refund policy, particularly those who waited to use their rolls after hearing about the issue. In their eyes, everyone else got twice as many rolls and presumably twice as much loot too... even if those new rolls may not necessarily result in usable loot.
For their part, the developers erred on the side of players with a solution that was fast, even if not necessarily completely fair to each individual situation. Obviously, Blizzard is not going to simply remove that new set of robes you rolled for and leave you naked in the streets of Silvermoon in order to put everyone back on an even state, but spending time identifying who received duplicates and correcting thousands of player's knockout lists could have delayed their solution for days if not weeks... potentially compounding the problem by running into the next reset.
Though of little comfort to those who still feel left out, the solution is certainly preferrable to undercompensating or just telling players "too bad." Those who were not affected still aren't, while those who were inconvenienced - even if only by way of muddying their knockout lists - have been made whole and then some.
At 100 crests per week, upgrading all 15 gear slots is still going to take awhile.
Whichever side you come down on, there is some solace in the fact that so much loot being made available each week means that players are likely to find themselves limited by Myth Dawncrests well before running out of places to spend their cores. Though its difficult to say exactly what other solutions could have been tried and still implemented within a timely manner, some players would have liked to see Blizzard try a more robust solution, with a variety of suggestions coming from the community, each with their own pros and cons:
Refund exactly what was spent and remove bonus rolled gear from all players - seems like a reasonable solution, but with horrendous impacts as players not even aware of the issue suddenly log in missing parts of their gear, not to mention the outcry from having to gamble all over again for a desired item they already previously won.
Just give two additional Voidcores to everyone - it's easy to see who would prefer this solution, though it would just as likely result in sentiment going the other direction instead.
Refund regular Voidcores to affected players, while giving everyone else special "duplicate" Voidcores that ignore the knockout list - possibly the most equitable option, this effectively replicates the bug for players who didn't use their rolls early enough to experience it, while still correcting the issue for future regular rolls. It does seem like a major technical hurdle though, which the system was probably not set up for and still isn't completely fair as some players may have used only one core early while others used up to three.
As it stands, what we got may not have been a perfectly fair solution, though it was probably the most practical one.
